


Take Care of You

by Churbooseanon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even from a distance, Epsilon-Church still watches over his team. Watches over Church. Carolina doesn’t really approve, but maybe she understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Care of You

“You’re not doing him any good coddling him like that.”

Carolina’s voice freezes him in place, makes him hold his non-existent breath as if doing so might convince her that he was actually asleep and that whatever she thought she had heard she actually hadn’t. Not that either of them actually believed it. He was nothing more than an AI. He didn’t eat, breathe, sleep or really do anything except for exist. Worse, he didn’t even take over most of the proper abilities of an AI. He didn’t do calculations, he was shit at strategy, and logic problems only confused him because what the fuck was up with that shit? No, all Epsilon was and would ever be was memories. Alpha’s memories of suffering and existence outside of anything that a normal human would consider rational. The Directors memories of his whole life up until the moment of Alpha’s creation. What few of Wash’s memories he’d been able to latch on to before he tore himself apart from the pain. Memories of Tex and Allison and Freelancer, and even a smattering of York from files that he’d downloaded.

But these days he was mostly memories from the moment he awoke in the floating alien technology ball up until this very moment, mixed very heavily with memories that Caboose had whispered to him in the dark before he was pulled from his memory unit and back into the painful existence that was life.

“You don’t understand,” Epsilon finally responded, holoprojecting himself before Carolina when her foot-tapping promised he wasn’t getting out of this without answering her.

“You’re the one that agreed to come with me,” she pointed out, and he can hear the annoyance in her voice. “To help me correct Freelancer’s mistakes. Which is easier, you know, when you aren’t keeping me up all night talking into the radio to that moron.”

“He isn’t a moron!” Epsilon snapped, then shook his head. “Okay, so maybe he is, but it isn’t entirely his own fault. You know better than anyone how hard it is to have multiple AIs in your head. It fucks you up royally, especially when you have ones with a little more spirit than Eta and Iota. But Caboose, he had three of them in him at one point. The full on Alpha-Tex, Omega, and what was left of Alpha when he became Church. Imagine just what that does to a human brain.”

The silence and the way that Carolina had her arms crossed over her chest told him that what he was saying was all well and good but it didn’t address her original point. Which it didn’t. Maybe he really was coddling Caboose but…

“He has nightmares,” Epsilon said at last. “Pretty bad ones about the Meta. I found out about them after you brought me back. You would go out on watch at night, and everyone else would go to sleep, and after about an hour Caboose would start whimpering. I got tired of it one night and told him to shut up, but it only made it worse. So… I told him it was okay. That it was just a dream. That is wasn’t really happening, and the kid just started to… I don’t know, quiet down. I guess I just got used to talking to him at night to keep him sleeping.”

Carolina didn’t interrupt him, not verbally, but the way she stopped nodding and tilted her head curiously asked the question all on it’s own. Why was he still doing it when he was so far away from Caboose that it didn’t affect him either way? How did he even know there were these nightmares? Hadn’t he broken ties with the others when he’d left with her.

“He leaves his radio on at night. I think… I think he’s doing it because he wants me to come back. So… I can hear him when he sleeps.”

“So just turn off the radio and ignore it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I need to take care of my team.”


End file.
